Melbourne woman Noi* recalls the last happy memory she had of her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter back in Thailand 22 years ago.
“She was starting to understand words. She would walk to fetch a water bowl or a basket for her grandma when we asked her,” she says about her first child, Nid*.
Noi, 20 at the time, took her daughter and went to live with her mother in a village in North-Eastern Thailand, after learning the woman her estranged husband had been seeing was pregnant.
When her husband, Tim*, visited on the pretext of making up, he snatched Nid from her and vanished.
“He asked to cuddle Nid for the last time before leaving, which I allowed. But he grabbed her, ran into his parked car, locked it and sped away.”
Noi says she and her brother ran after the car along a dirt road for over two kilometres until they could not run anymore.
“I collapsed on the road, crying my heart out.”
It took three weeks for the heartbroken mother to save up enough cash from harvesting and selling the crops in order to fund a 450-kilometre trip to look for her daughter. She and her brother went back to the rental room she previously lived with Tim, but to no avail because he was already gone. The landlord gave her Tim’s new address, in another province.
Noi with her daughter Nid in Thailand Source: Supplied
But they didn’t have enough money to continue their pursuit. So, they worked in a restaurant kitchen in Pattaya for two months to save up money.
They enlisted some help from local police officers and went to the address unannounced. This time, they found Tim, his pregnant wife, one of his sisters and the missing toddler, Nid.
“I said to him, ‘You are starting a new life. You and your new wife are going to have your own baby soon. Could I have my daughter back?’”
While the police were trying to resolve the dispute between Noi and Tim, his sister and his new wife took Nid out to buy some sweets. Not long after that Tim, who was a military man, refused to listen to the cops and rode out in his car.
“The police said Tim’s rank was higher than all of them so they didn’t think they could help. We ended up back at the police station, trying to report the case, but nothing happened.”
Noi spent the next several months searching for her daughter.
Nid was one and a half-year-old when she was snatched from her mother. Source: Supplied
“I cried every day. I cried so much. But my mother kept saying ‘if fate allows, I will get to see my daughter again.’”
Life takes a turn for the better
She says her life changed two years later when she met Peter, an Australian man. They got married and moved to Melbourne.
After living in Australia for a year, Noi and Peter went to Thailand to look for Nid. She widened her search area to include a seaside city where she first met Tim, his hometown and the town where she last saw him. Yet there was no progress.
“Whenever I saw a girl my daughter’s age, I would cry. I missed her so much. I kept asking when I would see her again when I would find out where she was. Sometimes, I would question if she was still alive or not.”
As she settled in her new life in Australia with her loving husband, another daughter came along who is now 15.
Even though Nid’s memory never faded and neither did Noi’s desire to see her first-born again, she didn’t try to look for her anymore.
But a couple of weeks ago, she thought of using Facebook.
On June 30th of this year, she searched the name of a sister of her ex-husband on Facebook.
The digital search result came up with a familiar face.
It was actually Tim’s sister.
She also found Tim’s new wife and their daughter, Tak, on Facebook. When Noi noticed that Tak was online, she quickly sent her a message asking about Nid.
“She is my sister,” Tak answered.
Noi says her heart was pounding with anticipation while she was relieved to find that her daughter was alive and well.
Source: Supplied
The online conversation led to a video call the next day with her ex-husband’s wife.
“I asked her, ‘do you remember me from the incident 22 years ago? It has been a long time that I have been tormented by not being able to see my daughter. Please, may I see her?’ and she asked Nid to speak to me on the video call,” Noi told SBS Thai.
The minute her long-lost daughter appeared on the phone screen, Noi could not stop staring at this young lady’s face who looks exactly like herself. Nid said “Sawasdee ka” (Hello) while greeting Noi and seemed to be puzzled by everything.
She was stunned to learn on that day that Noi was her biological mother while the mother she grew up with was actually her stepmother.
Nid murmured “hello mum” with tears running through her cheeks before hanging up the phone. It took her days to get over the shock.
Later Nid said that her father told her the truth about her life. She says she is grateful that her birth mother never gave up hope to find her.
“I’m happy to know the truth and I’m delighted to see you. I can’t wait to meet you in person soon,” Nid told Noi via a video call.
“Can’t let go of the grudge”
Noi says being able to see her daughter brought her "hopes and dreams of 22 years alive".
“But I never thought that one day I would find her through Facebook,” she says with tears in her eyes.
For her, this also inevitably means confronting the people who she says are responsible for causing this pain.
“When I first spoke to Tim’s wife, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she had done to me. It’s still painful. But 22 years have passed. So I don’t want to discuss anything about the incident with her again and I just want to let it go.”
However, she says her resentment towards Tim will not go away anytime soon.
“I told him, ‘if Nid comes to see me at the airport in Bangkok, don’t you ever come to see me with her. I don’t want to see your face. I can’t forgive what you did to me.’”
Since their reunion, Noi and Nid have begun to get to know each other. Noi says her husband Peter and their 15-year-old daughter in Australia are also thrilled to welcome Nid to the family.
“I will make up for the lost time and I will try to give Nid a new life. I will be supportive of whatever she wants to become either there in Thailand or here in Australia.”
But first, she hopes the COVID-19 pandemic subsides soon, so she can travel to Thailand and embrace her long-lost daughter again after over two decades of heartache and despair.
* Not real name.
